What It Means to Be Lost — Rolfe Barnard

Proclaimers of the Gospel and the Meaning of Revival

Don't you all want to sleep in? Well, I believe that we must, as we've never been taught to do, and I believe we must all become proclaimers of the gospel. I believe that's exactly what revival would be.

Apostolic Mission and the Scattering of the Church

We keep talking about we want revival. Well, when they had something that was written in the New Testament, the apostles stayed in Jerusalem, and the church was scattered, and never, ever went. They went and said, won't you accept Jesus?

And they preached the gospel. There's a passage in Scripture where one of the officials talks about some folks ever learning and ever coming to the knowledge of the church. And I believe that our methods, however blessed they may have been, in order to ask them a blessing to thank God for, I believe were utterly unfit for the anti-Christian spirit we're living in today.

Equipping Every Church Member for Ministry

And I think that this church not to pin the thing that takes the school of theology all together to prepare people to preach. I believe that every member of this church must be saturated with God's message and God's method, so that when you go out in the doorbell and get inside, you can do more than you've been able to do under the spectator type of Christianity where the preacher does the preaching and we do the listening.

Peter's Preaching to Cornelius

We'd like to do what they did in the Bible. I think I've called your attention to it so many times before. But when God sent Peter to preach to Cornelius, he didn't go out and try to get Cornelius to do anything.

He went down and preached the gospel to him. And while he yet spoke the word of the Holy Ghost, hearing them that heard it. Now we've got to become totally disciplined people. We've got to. We've just got to.

Evangelism and Revival Since Pentecost

Now we don't have to know that. Now we've got to put God's promise in the religious. We've got to become trained if we're going to have faith in God in this day. You ever ask us, do you? I'm somewhat encouraged by what's happened in the last few years.

If we can take what was there. Truthfully, I've talked to some of the missionaries who were there. And some of them I've talked to since going back. In Indonesia. And so for us, this preacher, they are, and I kind of think this is right, that evangelism, for the first time since Pentecost, brought revival.

And we say we've got to have revival. I don't know if that's not true. If there were a revival need, it would be the Paschal Heart, which says we've got to have revival. What on earth would that be? Huh?

Spirituality and the Work of the Church

Well, it would be men and Christians, that they'll try. It's a worship. Huh? We've got to learn how to be spiritual. We're under God. Now, how to call your pastor in, and get him to say a word, that's not necessary.

You get all the way around. And under God, if there's anybody in Africa, anywhere, even in Canada, in London, there's a very simple foundation of truth of Christianity. And while I've been used to, that yes, you can find revival, more profound in their attitudes, and more ignorant of this matter, you must help.

This, this thing, this thing will get next to you. It's a great, very useless fight, and talk about if we do it. To learn more and more, to prepare the pagan philosophy, in the ways of the apostles, and we'll have to, in the days of the beginnings of Christianity, and the planting of churches, they were planted, by Jews getting converted, apostolites, when they had some kind of version, some kind of contact, between that apostle's faith, and the faith of the world.

But there wasn't today. There wasn't today. The Roman was in our service, this Sunday morning. Something was said about a girl, who made a profession of faith. She was reared, in a Protestant renovation church, her father was a preacher.

And she didn't have the slightest idea, what she'd come about, by a profession of faith. And, how the bottom has completely fallen out, by the way we're there. I met you there in the kitchen, this guy was studying in there.

The Son of Man Came to Seek the Lost

In the gospel of Luke, chapter 19, and verse 10, the verse starts with a preposition of conjunction, and what came to me, whoever you are, there's a preposition of conjunction. Look here, do you know?

Do you know what that is? Huh? Twenty-nine kids in school, I've been past my grammar, so I've forgotten it all. Well, I don't know why it's called a preposition, in fact it's explaining something's gone on the pill.

And here it says, for the Son of Man, is come to seek and see, that which was lost. And the word lost there, has to be interpreted in the context, of the nine verses, above it. And the word lost there, doesn't mean, what we call lost.

The lost there, means, this is his name. The lost there means, given to Abraham, in what we call the Abrahamic covenant. The gospel and covenant form. And the statement is not there, but Jesus Christ came down here, not to make an effort to see, but to seek.

And not to make an effort to save, but to save. And to not make salvation a possibility, but to accomplish it. The syllogism gives it down to this, that everybody who's lost, in the sense of this context, is going to be saved.

Calvinism and the Holy Spirit's Work in the Gospel

Our business today then, is to become skillful readers of the word of God, cry out high, for the confirmation of God, which is what I'm talking about now. I'm known as a Calvinist, I don't know what that means, I'm no John Calvin, I'm no Queen Candela, but if you don't call yourself a Calvinist, remember, that Calvinism, in its essence, is simply this.

It's not predestination, it's not election, it's not irresistible grace, it's not those times. Calvinism, the contribution of Mr. Calvin, was simply this. That the gospel, has to be interpreted, and applied, by the Holy Spirit.

That's it. Now, I'll fight for that, I won't fight you over these other terms, I won't use them myself, you can't do that to me. You've got all the standing, and if you don't have the standing, you don't get mad at the folks you're trying to pump them into, they don't know it.

The Gospel as a Mystery and the Power of God

But the vibe of this thing is, that America, the pagan nation now, calling itself Christian, because it's had a gospel, that men could accept, and believe, and they hold on, apart, from the Holy Spirit.

Interpreting it to their hearts, and their emotions. Now that's it. It wouldn't do folks a bit of good on God, would it? For you to get them to believe in what you call your five points of Calvinism, that's not the issue today.

They'd just probably be a little better than they are now, if they switched their terminology. But the issue, that we've got to get excited about, is that the gospel itself is a mystery, and that nobody can understand it, and nobody can accept it, and nobody can believe it, except in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Isn't that right? And that that's the gospel that has the power of God, and the salvation. If there is any guilt on the heart, I'm going to touch the heartbreak of my ministry. The sovereign day speeches that came out of a party in New York City.

The sovereign day speech that a Christ-given pastor and they could not go out in the five seconds. They were all over America, and they missed it a million miles. What's the problem with that, I'm saying, that this is the gospel that has the power.

It's made a national hit because of the nationalist pride and the specialities that have been made to bliss them propaganda. And when it's gone out there, our enlightenment and trust in our help for your addiction and building the new gospel on this earth.

Grace, Divine Initiative, and Christian Obedience

I want you to get the real proof of the grace of God. That's important. There it is. The grace of God to love man puts a crown on God's head. It remains divine initiative. But God's in the business of man's disposition.

And if you're going to faithful indoor bearers, and if you don't, you've got no right to call yourself Christians. If the manhood and womanhood and young men and women of this church do not put their end to the blanket of the Christian or missionary, you're disgraced to the name of Christ.

And you've got to remember, to remember that that pagan attitude, that arsonist difference, that self-complacency, you'll find in nine and nine and nine tenths of that every home you get into or wherever you speak, didn't get that way all of a sudden.

That that way, because what has passed for gospel message and gospel method in your dear mind is more pelagian than any Pelagius ever was. This generation's been made Christian by a gospel that does nothing short of saying, sinner, save yourself.

I want us to get excited and fearful in the story of God and obedience, for he's not going to bring a revival with the kind of preaching and method we've had. He'd have to resign as God if he did. I want us to get with our hearts, not as a matter of theological argument, that everything that matters starts with Almighty God.

Repentance, Faith, and the New Birth

There are just three things that make, that spoil Christianity. First, repentance and prayer. No man can know that. He's been born of the Spirit, set by the fruits that come from the earth. And they're simple, they're just repentance and faith.

You're a very new Christian because you've lived a little bit and have what you call a glorious spirit. The devil could give you that, but the devil can't give you a daily repentance and a daily faith, and that's the fruit of the new birth.

And then, of course, the heart, being a Christian, is a matter of prayer. And everyone of them comes from God. Everyone of them has to start from God. What may appear to be our human virtues, are really God's gifts.

The very passion and hunger for God has to come from God. God creates the hunger and the thirst so that he can satisfy it. No man who's too proud for being infinitely in debt will ever be a Christian if God Almighty, hear me, if God Almighty can get a man to cease struggling to merit salvation, get a man to bow head and heart just to receive a gift.

Evangelism as One Beggar Telling Another

That's our problem. Our job is to be instruments of God in their day and night in getting people, L-O-S-T, lost. A gift that is going to take up beating if you ever get to where you are humble enough and enough of a beggar and desperate enough to take even a gift from Almighty God.

Now, don't you know I have grown with a nature that don't want to be dependent on nobody, God included. Does God get people lost? Can't get nobody lost in your day and mine unless he can set the church in memory.

So full of real and the word of truth where they got a chance that's used in the hands of the Holy Spirit to rob man of all hope and make him whore. Somebody's definition of evangelism would be, I propose, evangelism is one beggar telling another beggar where he got bread.

That's pretty good. Tell you where I got that which satisfied my hunger. That's pretty good. Young brothers, members of this church going all over the country already as being people who've grown the seed on what they call the doctors of grace.

They say of all of us folks we can't pray. We don't care if anybody gets saved or not. That's what people think about us. Huh? That's what they tell us. Huh? How much truth are we? Huh? How much truth in us?

I mean, we ought to substitute the word of knowledge for truth. Just make fool out of us. Huh? How guilty are we of all these things we say are lies? This bothers me. Members of this church, while you're soaking your souls in these great truths that must be taught, throw a little of David Bainard's spirit on a vial you're soaking.

David Brainerd as a Model of Evangelistic Zeal

Huh? In the hole of no shame. Just to hear him in his little old car. I'm not going out there unless you're going in. I'm not going down there unless you're going in. Just to listen to him. Jonathan Edwards said the greatest privilege he thought would ever come his way in his life was the privilege of having David Bainard die in his home.

Just to listen to him die. Jonathan Edwards said any interpretation of the gospel will give to the Christian church once every hundred years. A man like David Bainard is worth studying up what you can't study down here.

Oh, cry on your heart that it'll give you something of what it gave to David Bainard. That it'll give you something of what it did to holy Nick Shane. Catholic church, as rotten as it's been, used to produce some S-A-I-N-T-S saints.

What we call Christians produced a bunch of tacklers.

With a rattle like an old T-model four.

But David Bainard didn't get to where he could leave the snow saturated with his breath in northern New York as he agonized. He's an Indian. He got that way by switching his chewing gum one jaw to the other and accepting Jesus.

He got that way by getting acquainted with the holy requirements of a Christ holy God and his awful condition himself. Here's a man who entered in to that which my Lord said, you want to go to heaven, honey?

He agonized to enter in at the straight union. And he faced some things that we have evaded. Shall we obey God in our day? Honey, we got nothing to lose but let's pull up all our clothes and plunge in this battle head form us and get it ourselves and begin to demand.

Don't turn out tacklers. It turns out mighty saints. What we need is some godly people. He didn't get his character reasoned with. Our testimony, mine, yours included, don't get any higher much than the seed because of the unholiness of our character.

Brainerd's Struggle with Sin and Divine Sovereignty

Listen to David Brainard as he was trying to get, in our language, trying to get saved. Instead of evading things now, he faced them. He got to the place that he became a seeker. He wanted to get to the place that he could claim an interest in the merits of the shed blood of Jesus Christ.

That he could claim interest in the shed blood of Jesus Christ. And I quote from him in his struggle. He searched and he searched and he said, I found in thee great struggles, heart rising and heart enmity against God.

Imagine that. You'd ever face the holy requirements of God? You'd really face them? I think you'd get mad too. I'd love to see some people mad enough at God that they'd either give them a shotgun, try to put them out of business, or they'd fall at his feet, a helpless beggar.

He said, I found in thee great struggles, heart rising and heart enmity against God. He said, I often quarrel with God.

Us little folks, we wouldn't do that.

I often quarrel with God for laying the sin of Adam against me. He said, I never so much as consented when old Adam committed it. He said, I wish God had left me alone, stand for myself, and not abused me at that rate, to punish me for what another man hath done.

He may not have understood original sin, but he did show a grip with it. We don't have a spirit now. We just flipped over that and said, won't you take Jesus? And we did, and still going to hell. Listen to me.

He said, I charged God with cruelty. He took it seriously. And injustice and thought he delighted to oppress and crush poor mortals. There was a time he said he wished there were no God, or else there was another God equal in power with whom he might join forces.

And I quote him, he said, I longed to pull the eternal God out of his throne and stamp him under my feet more than I ever did to be avenged of any enemy in my life. He was enraged at the idea of God's sovereignty and the injustice of God making creatures and then subjecting them to everlasting punishment.

And the point I'm making is, he didn't have nobody to interpret the Bible the way he just looked at some of these gray, bone-crushing, flesh-chilling things in the word of God, and he looked at them, and he didn't have any faith yet, and he didn't have the Holy Spirit yet to interpret it, and he looked at them as naked as they are in the Bible, and if you look at them, you get mad, too!

You never got mad at God. You never looked at the kind of God there is in the Bible and his holy requirements. You never would dare to do like David Brainard said. He did reach up and pull God off his throne and get rid of it!

But he did. He did. The Calvinism I want, got some heat in it! And it will lead man to the very valley of death and hell itself, and set him shouting, Oh, let the God fly away! When he gets up on the other side, the guardian rejoices.

That's what I'm talking about! Of the snakes and the demons and the ghosts itself! And they'll never ever get over the wonder of sins forgiven. We've got to come back to it. And the four truths of the word of God, that God always has and still uses to get men from loss, are the truths that David Brainard didn't wink at, but looked at and bowed down to Canaan's happy shore.

The Holiness and Severity of God's Law

Look at him again tonight. First, the strictness and severity of almighty God's holy law. You have to start there. That's the only place you'll ever get in the West. Starting at the strictness and the awful severity of the holy law of God.

The holy law of God demands nothing short of outward and inward perfection. And the holy law of God, the same as it were on a dog's nose, that anything short of perfection, that's a crime. He kept looking at that holy law of God and he said, God almighty ain't got no right to create me!

And the man became delivered. No! For he's got to be perfect! And he came. Huh? He's got to be perfect! And he came. Now if that ain't so, we'll just roll with it. I tell you, I'll have you and Sanford Charles Jackson on this good deal.

You need to come around and talk to me about what's messing on me and I'm about as good as you are. Huh? But if this business demands perfection, I can't get no comfort out of saying, well, I expect I'm about as good as you are.

Huh? But that's exactly what the holy law of God demands! And God's got to repeal this law and he hasn't done it. He's got to abdicate it and everywhere else he's got to put perfection in the keeping of his holy law.

I tell you right now, if you'd ever face that, you'd either get mad or say, When? Huh? That's when we're in the mess we're in now! We've had some little something, you know, that's ignored! It's impossible to be kept holy law!

We've got to become skillful in getting people lost. And a man ain't fixing to realize his terrible condition until they keep facing him with nobody to walk the streets of the world that isn't as holy as God and as good as Jesus Christ.

There's an infinite hill wide open and so are you. David Bennett faced the second humbling truth that God Almighty has always been pleased to show men the truth about their lost condition. And that was David Bennett faced the fact that God requires faith, won't settle for anything else!

Human Inability and the Necessity of Repentance and Faith

And he didn't have none. He couldn't find any place to buy it. And he couldn't work it out! I'm telling you ladies and gentlemen, you are faceless now! So get hold of God and repent, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.

There's no hope for you. But the reason you and the awful mess you're in and come lost is that what God Almighty absolutely demands and commands and requires you are utterly unable to perform! And you're going to get in a fight.

You follow old man Barnett over this country the last 40 years. I ain't going to fight over some term about whether elections this or that or the other or something like that. You can if you want to. If you want to real fast, get it all in there together.

It'll get hot. And this is what it's dying for. No wonder nobody needs to become excused and exalted and put on a throne for the dear repentance and forgiveness of sin. Why, honey, they've been taught for the last 60 years by what we call fundamental preachers in America that they don't need God in this business.

They can do it themselves. That's right. And you think that this world is mad at us because we believe in election predestination. They don't even know how to spell those words. What I know that the war is getting hot about is whether or not the reason men and women are not screaming for God's mercy now is not that they believe what they've been preached and they think that they can produce repentance and faith any time they want to.

That's so a man may be in pretty bad condition but he ain't lost. Long as there's anything God's going to ask you to do to make a contribution to your salvation, you may be pretty badly whipped, but you're not lost.

You're not lost. We've got to become skillful in getting people lost. Lost. And then David brings it to pace, the third thing, that water gets hotter all the time. And he didn't evade it. And thank God there weren't no preachers around that would tell him that he should just forget about all those things, you know, and just take these.

Huh? So Jackson had a good boy, didn't he? He found out not only that he had to be as holy as God and as good as Jesus Christ, he was going to be sent to hell. He found out he had to produce a repentance and faith that was his own act.

God's not going to repent for you, and he's not going to believe for you, but you can't do it yourself. You see, what we call the gospel gets people to accept Jesus, but the Bible gospel gets men to be seekers of the Lord, to do for them what they cannot do for themselves.

That's the difference. Old Brother Rogers and I, we got gray in our head, and Brother Connelly and Brother Jackson, the rest of you folks are young, you ain't got no sense much, but maybe there's some hope for you.

But we used to talk about old Grandpa who lived in the day when people sought the Lord. Ain't nobody got time now to seek him, they get saved before they ever seek him. If you talk about, I've been in hundreds of baptist churches, you want to have a little fight?

I don't advise you to go in there now, but I've been in a few, and this is kind of where we've gotten a little scrap. Is it so? Are we going to keep on using the old methods that have got us in the mess we're in now?

Got us with a generation of church members as pagans as all get out? Are we willing to be knowers if that's God's will for us in our day? Preachers of what? Righteousness. I don't think anybody will even feel the need of being declared righteous upon the basis of faith unless they've been held over the hot coals of the utterly righteous demand of a wholly righteous God.

Seeking the Lord Rather Than Merely Accepting Jesus

You going to repent, are you? You better start pleading with God to grab repentance. You going to accept Jesus, are you? You better start seeking the Lord who purchased those rights by his precious blood.

This is the heart of the controversy. It becomes deeper when we face the third thing. David Brainerd kept crying to God, kept fighting him, mad at him, arguing with him, in a controversial with him, but he didn't take out because he wanted to be able to get a place he could claim an interest in the merits of the shed blood of Christ.

And he ran right smack dab into the truth of God's word that is the most humbling and the most pride-killing and the most flesh-slaying thing I've ever faced. He found out that God Almighty has the right to give or withhold faith.

And under God that he exercises that right. Now, if you want to have a fight, is that what you want to get in? That's your Calvinism, isn't it? You better just stay on some terms, you know, not get involved in this, but this is what this church has got to invade this city with.

This is how God gets men from law. That God Almighty has a right and he exercises it to give or withhold repentance and faith. Got it in the scripture for us? Of course I have. Fifth chapter of John. He gives life to whom he wills.

You mean to tell me I ain't got no way I can come to God and say, now listen here Lord, now let's just do some business here. I got a right to, you got to give me faith. You can't do that. You can't do that.

He don't have to do it. He don't have to do it. Now, if you ever face this, you get about as mad at God as David Brainerd did, or you might become a beggar. Oh, if you put it please, I sure would be much obliged if you fixed me so I could turn on myself and in dust and ashes of horror myself and spend the rest of my life standing in the need of mercy.

God's Sovereign Freedom in Salvation

And then David Brainerd of course faced the last thing. And it's in the word of God that God could save him or damn him and be just and get glory for himself. I've called attention to this point before you've forgotten.

And under God, I believe, we're going to have to come back to it. Not many years more than a hundred years ago, you walked down the aisle of a little Baptist church house or any other major nominations in America at that time.

You said, well, Jackson, I've been saved. I want to be baptized. I want to go on this trip. Well, Jackson, some of the brethren around here say, all right. We'll hear your experience of grace. And if it suited them, they'd take you.

If it didn't, they'd say, we'll have to deal with you a little more, brother. It's been an awful long time since anybody has been said, well, we'll have to talk to you a little more, you know. They don't do much of that now.

And if he passed that test, they'd ask him this test. And if you want to get the heart of Brother Calvin's theology, Brother Luther, here it is. John Calvin said, nobody will walk the streets of glory today who hadn't been made willing to go to hell.

You say you're Calvinist? Can you take that? That's what he taught. That's what he taught. And the old-time Baptist preacher a hundred years ago, if your experience of grace sounded all right, he'd say, my brother or sister, are you willing to be damned for the glory of God?

Now, I don't know whether any other Saturday night preacher included knew anything about faith or not. But that's what it is. Roman Catholicism in their day said faith was a mental ascent. The Reformers said it's a trust.

Faith as Trust Rather Than Bargain

Not a bargain, but a trust. Yeah, I am. You're worthy of my surrender. You're worthy of my trust, whatever you do with it. They said this faith. You mean to tell me, old Ralph Barnard, wouldn't just turn myself over lock, stock and barrel to God Almighty and Jesus Christ and leave it up to Him what He does with me?

That's trust. God Almighty help us, that's trust. And it leaves just one safe spot of ground for Ralph Barnard to walk on on this whole earth. Like that blipper, calling Jesus Christ to me here in the days of distress, saying, Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me whole.

And when the fellow's in that shape and he hears the gospel, boy, that's awful good news. For the next verse, the Lord Jesus Christ said, I will. That's good news, fellas. That's good news. The Spirit will be given to those who obey it.

Salvation as Freedom from the Prison of Condemnation

Let's get a Bible, start loving men and women, that's telling the truth. General Laws. Huh? Law and Law. Prison house. Under God's condemnation. Already passed. Heard from a prison cell. Locked. Got a key.

Somebody comes along, that's got the key. And what is the living Lord? The Lord is exalted, made a sovereign, and a savior. Express purpose, that he could unlock the cell door. Enable men and women to walk for free.

Let's start shutting men up to God. That's salvation of the Lord. Not a doctrine of the head, it is. Robbing men of all fame they've ever done or ever will do. Some people are going to become seekers of the Lord.

The Invitation to Call on the Lord

Amen. The reason I usually just use one invitation hymn is I believe it's true to what I try to preach. We're going to sing it as they soft the clay. Pass me not, O gentle Savior. Here I am, locked up in the prison house of the damned.

I haven't got a key. And he is telling me to walk out. I can't get the door unlocked. Savior, I need somebody to get me to where I am. Amen. Get me out of jail. Bless you, God. Amen. I don't know if I know, but the poor old sinners watch the scripture over and over again and says, Whosoever shall call.

Here I am. Lord, don't pass me by. I've got no rights. I ain't got no way to make a claim on you. I just say don't pass me by. Stop at my door. You can break the shackles. You can unlock the door. You can set the prison free.

There wasn't anything to call on the Lord. I wish somebody tonight could call on him. Let's quietly sing a moment or two together. Pass me not, O gentle Savior.